A Marvelous Jig

There were cheers from the crowd of tools watching as I screwed in the last two pieces. As is my nature, I wanted to do something completely unnecessary with this project. The metal insert on the boomerang was nice, but I wanted more. When I cut the wedge I realized that I needed some sort of way to keep the boomerrang and wedge with the jig, and then it occurred to me that this was a perfect opportunity for a gratuitous use of rare earth magnets.

I had two left, after my last rare earth magnet project, so I added them to the railing, and the project was done.

Today there wasn’t many wood working highlights. I added the rest of the holes for the boomerang, and superglued in (6) 1/4 inch washers into each one. This worked nicely. I also used my Dremmel to clean up the post on the boomerang, so that it was a better fit in the washers. The holes for the peg was simply a 1 inch Fostner bit, drilled to the depth of the bit. Next I put in the 1 inch dowel, used the wedge to mark the depth, and cut the peg off.

I like to make sure everything is smooth and so I got out Robert Burns the mouse sander. He was thrilled to help. We made the boomerang and wedge silky smooth and I thought we were done. Robert cleared his throat and looked at the peg. He was right, it was just slightly proud, so we smoothed off the top of the peg and I asked Robert if he thought we were finished. He said, “It looks marvelous.” The Twins agreed, as did the rest of the shop.

The only thing left to do was to take a couple of photos. My tripod, recently fixed, was stretched to the limit to get the shot I wanted. Thereis some slight distortion, as I had to use a wide angle to get the image I wanted. The images still shows how the jig works. The second shot is with the jig standing on end, leaning up against my router table. You will notice that the boomerang and the wedge are hanging nicely from their rare earth magnets.

So I finished the jig, in a couple of days, by creating a drawing, making adjustments to the plans as needed. Having the drawing really helped. It let me think about the design and provided a great starting point. When I drilled the first hole for the pivoting boomerang I realized that the holes I had planned for were too far apart. If I had stuck to the drawings there would have been boards which didn’t quite work, but now there are enough holes to accomodate all the sizes up to about 13 1/2 inches wide. Also I had planned on having the peg holes moving in a diagonal. I realized that this wouldn’t be as useful as another straight line, so though it wasn’t quite as pleasing to the eye, I made the change.

Did I spend a lot of time on a jig that most people would never bother with? Yes. I am pleased that I did though, as it realy holds the wood well, and I have a lot of wood to plane.

On a personal note to Alexandra and Kymberly who have asked how one subscribes to my blog. The answer is that I am working on getting it set up. I tried today to set up feedburner and failed miserably. I will keep at it. The RSS feed seems to be broken. I am going to work on it more tonight. Thanks for motivating me to get on the subscription thingy, as I had been meaning to do it for a long time.